Seems like there is more to performance than MPG...

It has been many months now since I traded the S10 truck in on the Toyota Echo.

I have toatlly enjoyed my time with the little Echo. It is a spirited little car that never fails to amaze me with it's agility and fuel economy...but, it is not my iX

The one thing that I have learned from this excellent little car, is that a small engine is not always a negative.

Today's 1.5 litre engines provide the same or more oomph than a 1980s 1.8 litre and probably more than many 2.5 litre engines of the day.

I really miss the comforts and refinements of the old BMW...I'm looking

Quote
Archeo-peteriX
It has been many months now since I traded the S10 truck in on the Toyota Echo.

I have toatlly enjoyed my time with the little Echo. It is a spirited little car that never fails to amaze me with it's agility and fuel economy...but, it is not my iX

The one thing that I have learned from this excellent little car, is that a small engine is not always a negative.

Today's 1.5 litre engines provide the same or more oomph than a 1980s 1.8 litre and probably more than many 2.5 litre engines of the day.

I really miss the comforts and refinements of the old BMW...I'm looking

You can take the boy from the Bmw, but you can't take the Bmw from the boy

Well... At Ford we now have a 1.0 3-cylinder having the same performance of a 1.8 of a couple of years ago. Even better, due to the turbocharger we have diesel like performance at the bottom end. And being a 3-pot, it sounds like half a Porsche at the higher rpm. Still can't beat an inline 6 though.

While I had that adventure with the heater core in my car, it was out of action for a couple of days. Christoph left his Honda Civic in our driveway for the last two weeks, and it has air conditioning that works, so I've been driving either it or my wife's Subaru Outback for the last week.

The Civic is okay, snappy engine, shifts nice, and cool A/C in this incredible heat we've been having. But, that car has very noticeable torque-steer. I feel it whenever I take one hand off the steering wheel to shift gears. Throttle on the steering pulls one way, throttle off it suddenly pulls the other way. Yuck. Who ever thought it would be a good idea to put power through the same wheels that do the steering?

And I still destest that Subaru Outback. It makes okay acceptable power at higher revs, but has no torque whatsoever at low revs. And whenever the A/C kicks in, the compressor suddenly robs half the available engine power. Blech.

Damn the hot weather. I shuffled the cars around in my driveway to gain access to my BMW again. Wow. That's such a nice car to drive. No torque steer, ever. Lots of low end grunt. Smooth nimble handling. So what if the A/C doesn't work anymore. That's what windows are for. I love this car!

My car has no AC alltogether, no turbo or compressor not much more to go...
I've spent 350€ on gas over last month, this one will be little better...
Must purchase something better, fast!